And, to your left, Harvard University

"HI. My name is Phil Richards, and I'm your Gray Line tour guide for today as we take a three-hour trip along historic Freedom Trail and then through Cambridge with its rich cultural heritage."

And so it is that a Harvard senior passes another day of spring exam period. After four years of being observed, the time comes to put yourself on the other side of the plate glass window. For a cool $6.75 you get to sec what Harvard is all about from a soft reclining seat.

I wouldn't want to say that they save the best for last, but I will say that we saw the Boston half of the tour first. There was a lot to learn from this trip. For instance, it turns out that June is National Dairy Month, and to mark these celebration, Boston has cattle grazing on the Common the first two weeks of the month. The first disappointment of the afternoon was our failure to spot them, and Phil sheepishly acknowledged that he hadn't seen any cattle himself in the last few days.

But whatever Phil lacked in credibility, he made up for in humor. One of the passengers' many chuckles came at the Bunker Hill Monument when Phil said. "It takes about 10 or 15 minutes to walk to the top, ten or 15 minutes to walk to the bottom and, as I recall, ten days to recover." Whatever.

Even as I sat by the window rubbing down my camera in anticipation of getting some pictures of Harvard students when we finally got there, I found Harvard allusions creeping into the tour. When we stopped to see Paul Revere's House in North Boston, the guide inside was telling us about the coattail chair at one end of a table. It had three posts coming up above the seat, two in front and one in back. There were no obstructions between them so man in tails could put one tail out to each side.

It was one of a kind; almost. "There's one other in existence." he told us. "It's at Harvard. Every year at commencement, the President of Harvard sits in it with his tails and makes his annual speech. That's the only time it's used." Two minutes later, we were through at the house and filed down the street three doors for ice cream cones.

We also visited the U.S.S. Constitution, and old ship made out of iron. Another tour-made up of school kids-was just about to leave, and the chaperone said, "Okay, kiddos, let's go we're going to Harvard University," bringing shouts of excitement from two, aspiring Frank Champis perhaps. I grow impatient looking at cannons and slipped off for another ice cream cone.

Moments later, we were cruising over Longfellow Bridge to Cambridge and M.I.T. We went by a dormitory, and Phil pointed it out to us. "That building houses something of interest," he said. "Girls." By this time it had become clear that Phil was a humorist.

We left M.I.T. and headed down Mem Drive. After a dissertation about the Polaroid-Land Company, Phil turned to current events. "Romember about two months ago when we had that women's lib march?" he asked. "Do you want to see the building where it all started?"

An elderly woman in the middle of the bus shouted, "No!"

"Well, if you'll look to your right you'll see it right now. 888 Memorial Drive. They called that no man's land." Chuckles. Phil continued. "They wanted to make that into a day-care center for kids. As I've told many tours, they must've had a hell of a lot of ambition." A camera clicked while the riders sized up the building and shock their heads.

We made the right up Plympton Street and heard all about John Kennedy and his undergraduate days in Winthrop, off to the left. Phil apologized that the route did not allow us to go right by it. Instead, sightseers got a good look at Quincy House, home of Boston City Council candidate Larry DiCara: But we weren't told about Larry. As we peered into the Quincy courtyard, we saw frisbies flying through the air, as they are wont to do. "Looks like they're studying hard." one woman said to her husband. "Surprised they can see the frisbies with all that hair in their eyes."

"As you can see," Phil said, "even the Harvard students have to relax."

As we reached the CRIMSON building, we had to stop for a few seconds in traffic. A friend of mine happened to walk out of the CRIMSON at that point, and as most Harvard students do, he surveyed the passengers from front to back, and three-quarters of the way back he suddenly doubled up with laughter at the sight' of me, staring out like all the others. This reaction brought an embarrassed silence to the bus as everyone tried to figure out who or what was so laughable. When another person came by and began to laugh, heads turned back to see who was causing these reactions.

The embarrassment became mine, and I tried to act surprised myself. I began to feel like a spy at that point, like a student who had gotten on to see what the sightseers were saying about us all the time, and in fact, that's what I was. I began to feel guilty in these people's eyes and hoped that they hadn't all guessed that I had a bursar's card in my wallet.

The passengers settled down and the bus moved up to Mass Ave and the "hallowed" Yard, as Phil called it, The tour brochure has a few words about this, too: "Entering Harvard Square, we view the famous Harvard particularly what appear to be Harvard students, is their tendency to act out before the sightseers and often-times wave. Nowhere else on the tour were people so conscious of being watched. I guess it's because we always fancy ourselves under observation. We seem to have the notion that average Americans find us especially fascinating; after all, even we usually find ourselves fascinating. I guess you'd have to call it vanity. I think we all wonder what the people behind the windows are saying about us. You know I didn't take the tour out of a love for buses.

We caught a glimpse of John Harvard's statue through the Mass Hall gate and noticed that three students were sitting in his lap. Then we passed "Harvard Memorial Theater." and finally headed for our third and last 20-minute stop-the glass flower exhibit at the University Museum.

Phil told us about the exhibit before letting us out. A Southern couple across the aisle from me turned to their son, who was a big fellow about 24 years old seated behind me. "You going'?" the man asked his son.

"I don't care anything about any glass flowers," he responded. His name was Clyde. "You've got to climb six flights of stairs. I'm staying' right here."

The man sat restlessly for 30 seconds. and then jumped up impulsively, "I'm going to go," he said, and his wife hopped up to join him.

As they made their way to the front of the bus, Clyde called out with just the right touch of sarcasm, "Hope y'all enjoy it."

When we got there, I decided to reassert my role as a tourist and started snapping pictures of the museum. I was going to ask Phil to pose in front of it, but then I just didn't have the nerve. one living in the Greater Boston area can be buried there."

Clyde didn't like that idea. "Sounds unconstitutional to me," he mumbled.

"Are there any questions?" Phil asked as he swung the bus around. There weren't, and as we passed the cemetery again. Phil gave us the acreage statistics another time. "Still no questions?" he asked.

An inquisitive woman up front asked why no one living in the Greater Boston area could be buried there. "Because they're not dead yet," Phil responded. Laughter. You had to be there.

The most amazing part of the tour for me came five minutes later as we looked out on Soldiers' Field to our right and Phil described the Bubble (The Farrell Track Facility). "See that structure shaped sort of like a balloon? We call that a seven-year building because it comes down after seven years. It was originally built three or four years ago to hold commencement activities, and then they tried baseball and ind?? ????k in there. But they've stopped using it for baseball. It's made out of canvas and rubber compounds."

After that display of unintentional deception, it was anyone's guess what he'd say about the Stadium as the tour drew to a close. But Phil did pretty well. "That horseshoe is Harvard Stadium," he told us. "It's often referred to as the Harvard Colosseum because it does resemble the Colosseum in Rome a little. It seats 39,000 people."

Clyde was not impressed. "We can seat more than that," he drawled. "Dad? Dad, can't we seat more than that? Can't we seat 46,000?" Then Clyde paused a minute before throwing out a final thought. "And I'll bet we could beat the pants off of those boys from Harvard."